To­day in his­tory

1851: Her­man Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale” was pub­lished in the United States, al­most a month af­ter be­ing re­leased in Bri­tain. 1889: In­spired by the Jules Verne novel “Around the World in Eighty Days,” New York World re­porter Nel­lie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) set out to make the trip in less time than the fic­tional Phileas Fogg. She com­pleted the jour­ney in 72 days. 1910: Eu­gene B. Ely be­came the first avi­a­tor to take off from a ship as his Cur­tiss pusher rolled off a slop­ing plat­form on the deck of the scout cruiser USS Birm­ing­ham off Hamp­ton Roads, Vir­ginia. 1940: Dur­ing World War II, Ger­man planes de­stroyed most of the English town of Coven­try. 1965: The U.S. Army’s first ma­jor mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion of the Viet­nam War be­gan with the start of the five-day Bat­tle of Ia Drang. The fight­ing be­tween Amer­i­can troops and North Viet­namese forces ended on Nov. 18 with both sides claim­ing vic­tory. 1969: Apollo 12 blasted off for the moon. 1970: A char­tered South­ern Air­ways DC-9 crashed while try­ing to land in West Vir­ginia, killing all 75 peo­ple on board, in­clud­ing the Marshall Univer­sity foot­ball team and its coach­ing staff. 1986: The Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion im­posed a $100 mil­lion penalty on in­side-trader Ivan F. Boesky and barred him from work­ing again in the se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try. 1996: Car­di­nal Joseph Bernardin, the se­nior Ro­man Catholic prelate in the United States and leader of Chicago’s 2.3 mil­lion Catholics, died at his home at age 68. Source: Associated Press